How Much Worse
by Tajjas
Summary: Trubel had heard that Portland was a decent city for runaways. Maybe that was true for other people, but so far things weren't going so great for her. Set during Nobody Knows the Trubel I've Seen, from Trubel's point of view.


_Set during Nobody Knows the Trubel I've Seen, from getting picked up by the cops to finding out that she's a Grimm from Trubel's point of view. Rating for language, references to things in Trubel's past, and generally violent thoughts on Trubel's part. Recognizable dialogue was taken directly from the episode and is not mine._

* * *

Fuck her life. Seriously, how much worse could things possibly get? She was locked in a jail cell about to be booked for murder, if the mental hospitals she'd been in were any indication there were going to be as many monsters in prison as anywhere else—and a lot fewer sharp objects to fight them off with—and there was a cop here that kept _looking_ at her.

Trubel pulled her arms in a little closer as she stared at the bars in front of her. She wasn't sure what he kept looking at her _like_ , but she knew it wasn't good. Not when he went on about things she didn't understand and used the word 'grim' the same way some of the monsters did.

She pushed herself to her feet and began to pace in a tight circle in the cell. She hated cages. Speed and maneuvering room and the ability to turn most anything into a weapon were a large part of what had kept her alive these past couple years, and now….

If she'd had any sense she'd have taken the hint when those two monsters had jumped her on the way into Portland and kept right on going. It wasn't like it mattered where she ended up; she never stayed anywhere very long anyway.

Another tight turn. The rest of the holding cells were unoccupied, probably a good thing the way her luck had been running lately, but why hadn't she kept going? She'd gotten keys and wallets from the two that had jumped her, and who the hell cared if Portland was supposed to be a decent place for runaways? So was Seattle, and that hadn't stopped that motel owner from trying to put his hands places she'd never asked him to. Hadn't even needed to turn into a monster to do it.

Trubel grimaced and turned again, rubbing her arms and tried to banish that memory from her mind. She'd put him through the wall easily enough, but the fact that she'd had to had been what had put her on the road again. Leading to said pair of monsters.

Another, harder rub of her arms. Monsters might not be new for her anymore—monsters or whatever they were that her mind kept creating and that no amount of drugs or 'visualizing' or anything else the shrinks suggested ever did anything useful about so she was just going to keep calling them monsters thanks all the same—but that didn't mean that she wanted to be dragged into the woods by things with fangs and claws. Hell, she didn't want to be dragged into the woods at all. But, no, instead of putting a few hundred miles between herself and this place, she'd grabbed a burger and a bed in the first cheap motel that she'd found. Talk about stupid.

Staying here had led to running into that lizard-girl in the park today, too. Trubel dropped back down to sit on the narrow bunk, leaning forward and cradling her head in her hands. Hadn't those first two been _enough_? It wasn't like she'd gone looking for a fight, all she'd wanted was a new pair of boots. But she hadn't had a choice, and then the cops had found her—the cops and yet another monster—and now here she sat.

It had been a red-eyed monster with the cops, too. Red-eyes were more dangerous than most; she'd carry proof of that for the rest of her life in the form of four parallel scars wrapping around one side of her waist. If she hadn't managed to get her hands on a chunk of glass from the window it had tossed her through she wouldn't be here right now, and the one today had been even bigger than that one. And if the cops hadn't gotten in the way she was damn sure he'd have done a lot worse than snarl.

The first cop, the one that had tackled her, he was the one that made her nervous. Nick they'd called him, both the other cop and the monster, but he hadn't even identified himself as a cop when he'd blocked her path, and the expression on his face when he'd been asking those questions…. It hadn't been a slimy look and his eyes hadn't shined, but those were about the only good things she could say because there had been an intensity there that she hadn't liked. Still didn't like. It was as if he expected something from her, and in her experience nothing good ever came of that.

The second cop had actually been bigger than the first, older and with a badge around his neck, but he hadn't been so bad. Or at least he hadn't been much different than any other cop she'd met. 'Police, freeze!', put her in cuffs—strong enough to do it, too, although if she'd still had her machete it would have been a different story—and toss her in a cell. Nothing new there. Well, not yet, anyway, not until they actually got around to booking her for murder.

No, it was the first one that bothered her. She shook her head and leaned back to rest her head against the bars. She didn't understand it. That look, the nonsense words, 'grim', as if it meant something. She couldn't rule out that he was a monster himself yet, either, even if she hadn't seen him change, because he was as fast as she was and stronger than he should be. If monsters could clean motels and work in shelters and all of that, there was no reason they couldn't be cops as well.

He had a hard hand, too. The blow hadn't been anywhere near as violent as some of the punches she'd taken over the years, true, not even heavy enough to bruise despite her attempted head-butt, but she was damn sure that that was because he'd pulled it not because couldn't hit harder. She didn't know why he'd pulled it, but she wasn't going to forget about it no matter what he said about 'sorry'.

She sighed, staring at the bars in front of her, and then rocked forward again wondering exactly when they were going to get around to the whole murder charge thing. She'd spent a few nights in jail here and there, mostly for breaking and entering, but that was small-scale stuff. If she told them about the monsters they'd probably swing her by the nut house first, but eventually—

Something clicked behind her, and she looked over her shoulder to see the first cop enter. Given the lack of any one else around he had to be here for her, but he didn't say anything as he came to a halt in front of her cell and held a notebook to the bars.

 _Her_ notebook, Trubel realized an instant later, and she shoved herself to her feet, fingers curling into her palms. She knew cops searched your crap when they brought you in, but however many times it had happened she still didn't like it. "What are you doing with that?"

"You did this, right?" he asked.

She glared and tried to grab it through the bars, but he pulled it out of reach. "Give it back to me."

He ignored the demand. "I'm going to take you out of here and show you something. We're just holding you for now, no charges have been filed, but if you try anything I will book you for murder."

That stare was back, the intense one that made her nervous, and under other circumstances she might have tried to go through him as soon as the cell was open. But even if she could knock him out of the way—and she wasn't sure that she could, not after what had happened earlier—where was she going to go? She was in the middle of a police station.

"Here."

He held her notebook out, and surprise held Trubel motionless for an instant before she snatched it back and tucked it up under her jacket. It wasn't much, but it was still hers.

"Turn around," he ordered, pulling out a set of handcuffs.

She wasn't happy about it since she'd have a better chance of escaping if her hands were free, but he was blocking her way and obviously not planning to give her a choice, and once she'd turned it only took him a moment to fasten the cuffs around her wrists.

"All right." He caught her shoulder and pulled her the rest of the way out of the cell, and for lack of any other options she went along with it as he took her back out of the station. Mostly, anyway. She couldn't help but try to pull away every few minutes because he was behind her and touching her and she wanted it to stop, but he didn't even acknowledge her attempts. She didn't have any leverage worth talking about, and as she'd already found out he was stronger than he looked.

The second cop was waiting by the car, illuminated only by streetlights now that the sun had set which didn't exactly make Trubel feel better about the situation, but at least there was no monster in sight. "Do you really want to do this?" cop-two asked.

"Yeah," the cop holding her said.

"Okay, then."

 _Trubel_ didn't want to do this, whatever 'this' was, and she tried to jerk away again, but neither of them seemed to care about her opinion as the second cop opened the back of the car and the first shoved her in. They both got in front this time so at least no one was looking at her, but with her hands bound…. She managed to hook an elbow under the door handle without catching their attention as they buckled in, but the door didn't open at her quick tug. Cop car, even if it wasn't marked like one. It figured.

She side-eyed the nearest window as cop-two started up the car and turned onto the road. There was a chance that she could break it if she head-butted it hard enough—maybe at a stoplight since going headfirst out of a moving car wasn't a great plan—but past experience said that that was more likely to knock her out than work. Probably doubly so in a cop car. And even if she managed to stay conscious, odds were they'd grab her again before she got far.

She was still working on the logistics of getting her legs up to try kicking the window out when another turn put them onto a side road and suddenly they didn't have to stop at stoplights anymore anyway. She didn't bother to curse; it was just more proof that her life was hell.

The drive continued in silence, which was marginally better than cop-one starting in on that 'grim' crap again like he had earlier, but not by much. Especially since cop-two kept eyeing her in the rearview mirror like he was expecting her to lose her shit or something. She scoffed under her breath. As if she'd waste the oxygen; she'd given up expecting people to answer cries for help a long time ago.

For a few minutes Trubel debated lunging forward and head-butting _him_. She could pull it off since there were no bars between them, but cop-one was right there beside him, and there was no way she'd manage to get her knees around fast enough for anything approaching a decent kick which meant he'd take her down immediately. And even if she did manage to stop the car by causing a wreck, the odds were that she'd get hurt worse than them since she was the one not in a seatbelt. She healed fast, but not that fast.

She was still trying to figure out some way to twist the odds in her favor when they turned off the road and into a dirt lot. She hadn't really thought about where they might be going when cop-one had said that he wanted to take her somewhere, but this place a fair distance from the station with a bunch of old RVs and trailers and whatever sitting around sure as hell wasn't it. If she'd stumbled across this place on her own she might have tried breaking into one of the better-looking—or at least marginally less decrepit—trailers in search of something to pawn, but she'd damn well have kept both eyes peeled when she did it because this place practically screamed 'jump me.'

Her feeling of dread grew as they came to a stop. Both men were stronger than her, she was unarmed, and her hands were still bound. Behind her and without enough slack to pull under her without dislocating her shoulders, which meant that even going for their eyes wasn't an option.

Cop-one opened her door. "Get out."

No. No, no, no. But it was just _barely_ possible that she could make a run for it once she was free of the car, and he looked perfectly willing to drag her out if she didn't cooperate. She climbed out slowly, keeping her head down. It was a combination of trying to look harmless and hoping to spot something in the dirt that might serve as a last-ditch weapon or lock pick or both, but it didn't help as he locked a hand around her upper arm. A quick look around didn't show any other sign of life or anything useful that she could use for a distraction, either.

"There's something I want to show you in there." He gestured at the trailer nearest them.

"Yeah, sure there is." She couldn't keep the edge of panic out of her voice, and this time she put everything she had into pulling away as he started to draw her forward. For all the good it did. "I'm not going in there with you."

"I don't blame her," the second cop said, surprising Trubel. "I wouldn't go in there with us either."

Cop-one looked back at her and then shook his head. "You don't have to go anywhere." He released her when the other was close enough to get a grip on her opposing arm, and then headed for the trailer.

"What kind of cops are you, anyway?" she had to ask as cop-one unlocked the door and climbed inside. What the fuck was going on here?

"That's a good question. I wish I had a good answer."

Not comforting. Not that much in her life was, but what was she _doing_ here in some trailer park in the middle of nowhere? She twisted again but he didn't release her, and now she almost wished that they had booked her for murder. Maybe then someone would notice that a couple of psycho cops had kidnapped her from the police station.

Cop-one stepped back down out of the trailer with something in his hands. "Take her cuffs off."

Trubel went rigid at the order. On one hand it was exactly what she wanted them to do, but on the other no one ever did exactly what she wanted.

"You sure?" Cop-two asked.

"Yeah. She needs to see this for herself."

"See what?" Trubel demanded, pulling her arms around in front of her and rubbing her wrists as soon as they were free. None of this made any sense. They arrest her—or don't, or kind of arrest her, or _something_ —they drag her out here, and then they release her? No way in hell. She opened and closed her hands as cop-one approached. If anything her nerves were getting worse, and never mind that neither man had actually done anything to her. The operative word there was _yet_. And even if she was loose she was still blocked in between them with neither of them were behaving anything like she'd expect. Maybe they were both monsters? That didn't explain this place, but it made as much sense as anything else.

Cop-one shoved the object at her. "Look at it."

The thing he all but dropped in her arms was a book, although it took her a moment to realize that. Mostly because people didn't drag you to rundown trailer parks to show you their library. She stared at him for a few minutes longer, but when his expression didn't waver she finally looked down at the thing in her arms. Yep, a book, and an old one. Heavy too; she had to juggle it a little just to get it to balance it on one arm so she could open it. She was more than a little tempted to throw it straight back at him and run rather than open it at all, but when she did—

She froze for an instant. She'd seen the monster staring up at her from the page before. Or one just like it, anyway. She lifted her head to look at cop-one, who met her gaze steadily, and almost against her will her eyes were drawn back to the page in front of her. The monster was still there, and when she flipped back in the book there was another one, and another, and it just kept going. Not all of them looked like things she'd seen before, but there was a red-eyes, one of the ones who looked like they were decaying in front of you, a bird nose….

"What is this?" She tried to keep her voice steady as she looked up at cop-one again, but she wasn't sure how well she managed. She'd thought things were confusing two minutes ago, but this took things to a whole other level.

"The truth. That no one's ever told you before."

He was still looking at her, but right now what she held was way more frightening than any cop no matter how he was behaving. Pictures—pictures that _she hadn't drawn_ —of things that everyone insisted didn't exist. Things that up until now she'd have sworn were only in her messed-up mind.

Cop-one turned slightly and gestured towards the trailer. "There's a lot more of it in there. You need to go in there to—"

She caught her breath and shoved the book at him, making a beeline for the trailer. She still didn't know what this was, but if there were really more pictures she had to see them.

The inside of the trailer gave her pause for a moment, with stacks of books everywhere and a hell of a lot of weird shit on the walls, but the open book on the table drew her attention. There was a bug monster on the open page, some kind of bull monster that she hadn't seen before on the next, and another, and another. "What do you mean, this is the truth?" she asked as the two cops stepped up into the trailer. She could hear her voice cracking again, but she didn't care.

"I'll get us some coffee," cop-two said, looking over at cop-one. "This is going to take a while."

The first cop nodded, and Trubel returned her attention to the book she held. There was a bunch of writing on the page, but none of it was in English so it wasn't much help.

"It's my truth too," he said, drawing her eyes back to him. "I see what you do."

"No, you can't." It was the first time she'd gotten it from a cop, but shrinks had tried that tactic before. Play along with the crazy girl and then dope her to the gills. If they didn't just turn into monsters themselves. Jackasses.

"Everything in these books?" he said, gesturing forward with the one he'd shown her outside. "I can see too."

She looked back at him. There was no sign of a lie in his expression, and he _had_ been the one who wanted to bring her here, but what he was saying…. "I don't understand."

"Neither did I."

He stepped closer and she tensed, but he didn't seem to notice.

"I thought I was going crazy, but I had somebody who could explain to me what a Grimm was," he continued. "Now, you said that they called you that."

"Some of them did," she agreed with a tight nod, looking away from that steady gaze. "I didn't know what it meant."

He took another step towards her and she lifted her eyes again to meet his.

"That's why I brought you here," he said quietly. "I want to explain what it does mean."

Trubel swallowed hard and then nodded. She didn't know exactly what he was saying or what she was agreeing to, but if he could really make sense out of the things she'd seen, she'd listen. She _had_ to listen. "Tell me."

He smiled slightly. "All right. Why don't you have a seat?"

She started to shake her head, but he backed off a little and took the stool by the wall, and after a minute she sank slowly into the chair in front of the desk.

"Your name's Theresa, right?" he asked. "Theresa Rubel?"

They'd fingerprinted her so it wasn't like that had been a shot in the dark, but she gave a quick shrug and then a nod. It was technically correct, just not the name she used. She wasn't in a hurry to give that one away.

"Well, my name's Nick. Burkhart. It's nice to meet you."

She wasn't much for polite chitchat on a good day, and right now this was anything but, but he started talking again before the silence drew out.

"I'm a Grimm, like you. Being a Grimm means that we can see Wesen whether they want us to or not."

'Wesen' was one of the words he'd said before, although she'd been too shook up to pay it much attention. It had something to do with the red-eye, she remembered that much.

"Wesen are…they're everything in these books," he said before she could ask, tapping the one he still held. "All those things you've been seeing, the people whose faces change, those are Wesen."

"They're monsters."

He shook his head. "They're not. They look different, but they're mostly like everyone else on the planet. Some good, some bad, and the majority somewhere in the middle."

"Yeah, right." Tell that to someone who hadn't been bitten and clawed and worse.

"I'm serious." He looked away for a minute and then met her eyes again. "We pulled your records, and I know things have been rough for you these past couple years, but believe it or not, most of the Wesen you've run into were probably as afraid of you as you were of them."

"Yeah, right, I'm just terrifying." What she was, or at least what she'd been up until she'd started collecting weapons, was a target.

"You kind of are, to them. Grimms have a reputation. A pretty bad one, mostly involving heads getting chopped off. It's deserved in a lot of cases, I mean, my mother, my aunt, apparently my grandfather…." He waved a hand. "I'm a cop, and I still spend a fair amount of time explaining to various Wesen that I'm not going to hurt them so I can imagine what they'd think about running into a Grimm on the road. Even a young one."

Trubel shook her head. She'd done her fair share of head chopping, along with slashing and stabbing and everything else along the way, but the idea that the monsters had been scared of her was absurd.

"Look, you saw that guy with us earlier, right?" he asked. "You saw him change?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "Into a red-eye. They're dangerous."

"They're called Blutbaden, and yeah, they can be. I've certainly met a few that I wouldn't want to run into again in a dark alley. But that _particular_ guy? His name is Monroe, and when I said that I had someone to explain this Grimm stuff to me, he's the one who did a lot of that explaining. He's had my back more than a few times. And do you know what his day job is?"

Following cops around and scaring the shit out of people? How would she know? "No."

"He repairs clocks."

She opened her mouth and then shut it again. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but that hadn't been it.

"He's got a fiancée named Rosalee. She's a Fuchsbau. Uh…."

She jerked back a little as he was suddenly closer—maybe the speed had to do with this Grimm stuff too?—paging through the book in front of her, but he didn't even look at her until he reached a page with a fox-person on it and tapped the image lightly.

"Like that one, there. She owns a shop and sells spices and teas and some other specialty stuff for Wesen. And the guy who fixed my fridge—and my door, and some other stuff—is an Eisbeber." He turned to dig another book out of a pile, setting it down on the table and with a bit of flipping around had it open to a page with a man that she would have named a beaver-person. "Here. Has a wife and three kids and is a fan of Oregon State like you wouldn't believe. Wesen are nurses and lawyers and teachers and everything else. They might be different looking, but they are just people."

The opening of the trailer door drew both of their attention, but it was only the other cop. "Got the coffee," he said.

"Thanks. Hank, this is Theresa; Theresa, Hank," Nick said.

Hank handed a cup to Nick and surprised Trubel by sliding one towards her as well before sinking back into a chair with a third and setting the holder aside. "So how far have you gotten?"

"We're Grimms, we see Wesen, Wesen are the things in these books. And they're people."

"Not a bad start."

"We're still working on that last."

"Are you a…can you see them too?" Trubel asked, wrapping a hand cautiously around the cup. The warmth was grounding in the middle of all this insanity, but right now she wished that she had her bag and her knight to hold on to.

Hank shook his head. "Nah, not unless they force the issue. I'm just your average everyday human who happens to know a few things most people don't. Had a couple of weird cases working with him," he jerked a thumb at Nick, "put myself in therapy when _something_ jumped me in the middle of the woods, and then my goddaughter woged in front of me screaming about him wanting to kill her and that was that." He shrugged. "These days I just figure more things in Heaven and Earth and all that. Makes some of our cases make a hell of a lot more sense, I will say that."

"Your goddaughter?" Trubel asked after a moment. Shop owners and refrigerator repairmen and this was just nuts. Nuts-er than she'd thought that she was. Sure, she'd figured that there was no reason that monsters couldn't be masquerading _as_ people, but the idea that they _were_ just people…she was going to have some trouble with that one.

Hank nodded. "Her name's Carly. She's a Coyotl. Her dad is too; he and I went to school together, played football together, all of that."

"And for the record I had absolutely no plans to kill her," Nick put in. "But she'd heard stories about Grimms, and...well, like I said, not a great reputation."

Trubel hesitated and then looked up at Nick, and he seemed to understand what she was asking because he picked up the first book he'd shown her and spent a few minutes flipping through it before setting it back down in front of her. "That one."

Her fingers clenched convulsively on the edge of the desk. She'd met a couple of those before—if 'met' was the right word when they had you backed into a corner in some seedy dive in middle-of-nowhere Nebraska—and it sure as hell hadn't been a good experience. And the cop said one of them was his _goddaughter_?

"You've met one?" Nick asked, apparently catching her movement.

"More than one." Her voice was tight even to her ears.

"They do have a bad reputation," Nick said. "Just depends on the person, though. I mean, what is it that Carly's going to school for now? Some kind of medical something?"

"Medical school eventually, right now it's some kind of fancy business thing with the science classes she needs thrown in. Apparently she wants to keep her options open."

College was so far from Trubel's experience that she couldn't even come up with a reply to that. "What makes them turn into monsters?" she asked instead. "Or turn into whatever, I guess. You said we could see them because we're Grimms so does that mean we do it? Like an allergic reaction or something?"

"No, changing like they do, it's called a woge. Sometimes they do it on purpose, and that anyone can see which is how Hank saw Carly, but sometimes it happens when their emotions get the better of them. It's the emotional changes that we—Grimms—see that others don't, and that's what scares them. Well, that and the head-chopping thing."

"So woge—woging?—is when they change into monsters, and what, un-woging is the change back?" Usually she only saw that part happening after she killed them, and then only if she didn't have the strength left to run away immediately. And she still wasn't sure that she believed the not-monster thing.

"It's woge either way, apparently. I thought it was confusing too at first, but you sort of get used to it." He shrugged.

"Yeah. Sure."

He grinned. "Well, of all the things you have to get used to, you have to admit the wording is pretty minor."

That was kind of a good point. She looked at the books scattered around them. "How many are there? How many Wesen?"

"No idea. A lot."

"How many different kinds?"

"I don't know that either. Personally I've seen maybe a few dozen, but I've had these books for a couple years and I'm still trying to make a dent in all the possibilities. And I'm sure not every kind of Wesen in the world are listed in these, either."

She looked down again, flipping a few more pages in the book in front of her, and then lifted her head and took another look around. "Where did this all stuff come from? The books and everything."

"I got it from my aunt, but it's been in my family for generations. Not that I knew that until I started seeing things." Another quick smile. "Truth be told, it would help if I could _read_ more of the books. I mean, some of them are in archaic English so that's just a matter of puzzling it out, but the others…. My aunt was a traveling librarian who did translation work all over the country, but even when she dragged me to lectures I never paid much attention. Kind of regretting that now."

"So what do you do if the book you need isn't in English?" Trubel asked. "Just chop off their heads?"

" _People_ , remember? And I'm a cop. I generally try and avoid the head-chopping if it's not absolutely necessary. Which, for the record, is a little different than the attitude of most of the Grimms who wrote these books."

"There's an understatement," Hank muttered.

Nick shook his head. "We've got a little Spanish between us," he gestured to himself and Hank, "and Juliette is fluent. Monroe can read German fairly well and Rosalee knows some too, and our—a guy at the station knows Latin. Other than that there's Google translate and showing the pictures to Monroe and Rosalee and hoping they can give us something. So far it's worked out okay."

Trubel took another quick look at the book in front of her. "So those monsters that attacked me last night—" because _them_ she wasn't calling anything but monsters—"and the one today, you think that if I looked I could find them in here somewhere? Find out what they were from one of these books?"

"The two last night were a Lausenschlange and Klaustreich, and the girl in the park today was a Skalengeck. I can show you the entries if you like."

It was ridiculous how easily he rattled those off. She nodded.

"Again, keep in mind that the Grimms who wrote these were a little biased. I've met all three kinds of Wesen, and while some of them have been jerks or worse, it's not true across the board." He flipped forward in the book in front of her. "That's a Skalengeck."

Trubel breathed out slowly and touched the page. Right there, just like that.

"I remember seeing a Lausenschlange is in this one," Nick said, lifting another book and flipping it open quickly. "Right here. And you'll have to give me a minute on the Klaustreich, but he's around here somewhere too."

The Skalengeck entry wasn't in English, but the Klaustreich was when Nick found it. It was old-type English as he'd warned, but she was able make some of it out well enough. None of the description was very complimentary. To have all of this sitting here in front of her, though, after the hell the last few years had been….

"You know, how about we call it quits for the night?" Nick asked, and Trubel realized that her hands had started to shake slightly. "Start again fresh another day?"

"Uh, Nick, can I talk to you?" Hank asked.

"Sure. You'll be okay for a couple minutes, Theresa?"

"Yeah. No problem." Alone in the crazy cave of insanity. Except now it wasn't so insane. _She_ wasn't so insane. Trubel wasn't so sure how to process that part yet.

"Don't mess with the weapons cabinet," Nick ordered.

Her ears perked up a little at the mention of a weapons cabinet since she'd become very fond of sharp objects these last couple years, but the door didn't latch as the two of them stepped down out of the trailer, and for the first time in a long time she was more interested in what might be being said about her than anything else. She'd given up listening to doctors and shelter volunteers and all of that a while back, but this evening had been different, and they wouldn't have bothered to go outside if they _weren't_ going to talk about her.

"—sure about this, Nick?" Hank was asking as she leaned close to the door.

"What do you mean?"

"With everything that's been happening, you really want to take a homicidal baby Grimm home with you? She's already killed three people that we know about, and you saw that machete. You don't pick those up at Walmart."

Trubel ignored the comment about her knife—she'd grabbed that one from a pawn shop, as it happened—more concerned with what Hank had first asked. Nick hadn't done anything to hurt her, but past experience still hung a 'yet' on the end of that sentence, and the idea of going to his home made her more than a little uneasy.

"Well, what am I supposed to do, Hank?" Nick asked. "Stick her back in lockup and wait for someone else to make the connection with the murders last night or the girl today? Tell the officers on duty to make sure not to put any Wesen in with her if the drunk tank gets filled up? She's a scared kid, and she's got good reason to be. You know how you felt and you know I see a lot more; can you imagine what _years_ of that would do to you if you didn't know what was going on?"

"Put me in a mental hospital would be the least of it," Hank agreed after a minute.

"Besides, you saw the sheets on those guys. And the drag marks. If she wasn't a Grimm, we'd be investigating _her_ murder right about now."

"What about the girl in the park today?"

"Not exactly squeaky clean either from what Wu said. Come on, Hank, I don't think we've got someone looking for a fight in there."

"All right, but I'm telling you, man, you'd better be nominating Juliette for sainthood sometime real soon." A pause. "Better hope that nobody else looks too closely at your house guest, either. We got the tip from the motel owner because of the photo we put out this morning, remember?"

So that's how they'd found her. It figured. Asshole.

"Yeah, but so far the only tip was from that motel owner, and nobody but us saw her stuff, right?" Nick asked.

"I don't think so."

"So we'll just keep it that way."

"All right," Hank repeated, sounding resigned. "But let's get back inside before she finds the elephant gun."

Trubel dropped back into the chair and gulped down a few swallows of coffee, flipping to a random different page in the book in front of her as the two of them stepped back up into the trailer. Maybe 'Juliette' meant that Nick was married. Not that guys with wives didn't mess around, but he didn't look at her slimy and hadn't shown any sign of that earlier. And if that was what he wanted he probably wouldn't be taking her back to his actual house. Probably.

"Come on," Nick said, gesturing for her to get up. "Let's go."

"Go where?" She wasn't quite out of it enough to admit that she'd been eavesdropping on them, even if they probably suspected it.

"Back to the station to get your stuff first of all, and then to my house."

"Why?"

"Because you can't stay here, and would you really rather that we put you back in lockup? We can if you want to, but eventually someone besides us is going to get a look at those knives you've got."

She didn't see a reason why they couldn't just let her go, even if she didn't exactly have anywhere _to_ go, but neither of them even seemed to be considering that option. "I can have my stuff back?" she checked after a moment. "All of it?" Once she had her stuff, even if he did take her back to his place she could find a way out. Pick a lock, break a window, whatever. Portland wasn't the only city in the country.

"All of it," Nick agreed. "The last thing anybody wants lying around the station is a machete, although I'll thank you to leave it in its sheath at the house." He nodded at the cup in front of her. "I'm guessing we can probably get more than just coffee for dinner there, too."

That was playing dirty, using the fact that she hadn't eaten anything today except the remains of fries from dinner last night against her. Even if the clock in the trailer said that it wasn't as late as she'd thought, she was still hungry.

"Come on," he repeated, waving her forward again. "Juliette won't mind you taking the spare room, and I'll bring you back here tomorrow if you want to look at the books some more."

It was weird, but somehow that steady look wasn't as intimidating as it had been earlier. And he had mentioned Juliette—whoever she was—outright and it sounded like she'd be there too, so...Trubel nodded. "Okay."


End file.
